Plaid Mary Janes & Pattern Review

These are my latest project. I used simplicity pattern #2278. I think this was a great pattern. I am not a complete beginner at sewing, but I am by no means advanced and I think this is a great starter pattern. It was easy to understand the directions and easy to sew. This is the second time I have made them and both times, the results were great. I made a size large for these because the sizes are not very clear on the pattern. They ended up a bit big, but they still work. I wear a size 8.5, so next time I will be making the medium.

Banners

I finally got around to making the first banner for my etsy shop. The first of what I hope to be dozens for birthday parties, weddings, baby showers, bridal showers, holidays, welcome home banners, etc. I want to keep providing this artwork for you. I love doing it and love providing you with something beautiful to decorate your home with. I thank all of you for your purchases, for providing support to a starving artist so I can keep doing what I love and providing you with products that you love.

Sincerely,

Katherine

Studio de L'amour

Valentine's Banner

Long Lost Pictures

When we got married nine months ago, we had a photo booth at our reception. It was super fun to see everyone's pictures and great as a record of who attended, but I never showed them to anyone. So if you wanted to see your photobooth picture or if you are looking for ideas for your own reception, here you go:

(If your picture is not here, I still have it, I just didn't upload it.) There's lots more where that came from, but it's time for me to go to bed now. Thanks everyone for making our special day even more special.

Date #1

This week we finally got around to doing date #1 of out 12 dates of Christmas and it was a blast!

Just to recap for you, I gave my husband the 12 dates of Christmas for Christmas this past year and he gets to redeem a date each month. The envelopes that have the date ideas in them include everything that we need for that date. The dates also correspond with the 12 days of Christmas song, so this month is a partridge in a pear tree.

The bottom reads: we sure do make a great "pair" For our date we had to do everything with our hands tied together.

trapped!

Here was our list of tasks to accomplish one handed for the evening:

First we had to pick out outfits for each other. For this date, we weren't leaving the house, so they were a little goofy:

My husband picked out a white skirt for me with a "New York" print shirt, piano print skinny tie, and inside out vest.

I made him wear a red bow around his neck, a suit coat, and a cowboy hat.

Our first task was to put together a puzzle. I just cut up the back of a cereal box.

ta-da :)

Our second task was to make a collage out of some tissue paper. The husband wanted to make a rocket ship. It turned out pretty well I think. I even got to put a pink window on it. While we were doing all this, we had our dinner cooking.

Penne pasta, yum!

I must say that eating dinner with the husband with our hands tied together was much better than eating spaghetti with your hand tied to a deacon when you were a beehive and your leaders were trying to teach you proper etiquette. That's a store for a different time though.

Our next task was to write a haiku about our night. It reads "Alex is five plus one, going to be youngerest, what a funnerest" He was remarking that he felt like he was six, because having your hands tied together really diminishes your coordination. Apparently it diminishes your English skills too, because this thing makes no sense whatsoever. Also, does Alex have one syllable or two?
One of the last things we had to do was take a picture of ourselves to commemorate the night.

Thanks for reading everyone. Stay tuned for date #2 :)

Chocolate

So lately I've been devouring chocolate like there is no tomorrow. I've almost gotten through my Christmas haul. So I figured I would share some delicious chocolate yumminess with you. Keep in mind, that I haven't actually made any of these things, but I'm one hundred percent positive that they are very delicious because they are made of chocolate.

Three ingredient homemade 3 musketeers bars

by Monster Mama

Chocolate Dipped Chocolate Cupcakes

by Oh Cupcakes

and last but not least.... Chocolate Wasted Cake

by Art of Dessert

Mens Shirt refashions

I found some great new ways to adjust mens old clothing today while on pinterest and I thought I would share them with you because if your husband is anything like mine, he has TONS of old t-shirts from just about his entire life that can be recycled for great purposes such as the following:

bow top from Grey Luster Girl

necktie top from McKells Closet

Ruched top from Sugar Bee crafts

and ruffle dress from Pinterest

Candy Labels

I just got the new section of my Etsy shop up for candy labels. These are great and cheap for just about any celebration or occasion including weddings, baby showers, birthdays, bridal showers, holiday parties, office parties, relief society activities, and the list goes on. They are also versatile. Traditionally, they have been used on Hershey's kisses, but they also work great on rolos and reeses peanut butter cups and I don't know any people who would turn down a reeses. Here is my first set:

view shop here

Forgotten Post

I meant to post this a long time ago, and forgot. But lucky for you, I just remembered. I have to share this amazing pattern with you because, well, its amazing. I found this shoe pattern (Simplicity #2278) at the store and fell in love with it. Homemade shoes? yes, please. It contains adult and baby size shoes, so you can make matchy matchy shoes for you and your little one. I made this pair for my sister for her birthday back in July, so yes this post is long overdue.

It is a great pattern and pretty easy too. I cant wait to make shoes of every color.

Savings

As a reward to all my faithful readers out there, I am giving you a coupon to my Etsy shop if you follow my blog. This will give you 20 percent off anything and everything in my shop. Thanks for reading and for all your support. Your code is BLOG20

New items in the shop

So after my computer crash escapade, I got all my files and programs set up on my husbands computer and my etsy shop is up and running again. Along with this good news, I am also starting a new line of printable (that means no shipping) inspirational quotes, saying, and scripture posters. If there is a favorite quote you have always wanted to see hanging on your living room wall, I would love to have a go at making a poster out of it, so just let me know. Here is the first of my line:

http://www.etsy.com/listing/90209204/printable-quote-not-all-who-wander-are

New years

gah... I have no pictures for this post. I promise i will do better next week. Well for new years, I made a goal to make goals. This way I can go week by week and actually get stuff done little by little. Take this last week. I made a goal to clean the toilet. Well, it didn't actually get cleaned, but I got lots of other stuff done in the process of avoiding this nasty chore. I cleaned out the whole kitchen and hung up all my clothes that were strewn across the floor in the living room and bedroom. I started and finished my final project for my Photoshop class. I'm updating my blog. I worked on some new products for my Etsy shop: www.delamour.etsy.com. I worked 20 hours at my part-time slave wage job. I've accomplished tons!

Next week, I'm going to clean the toliet again.

The other major thing that happened this week is that my poor 15 month old dell studio laptop died. It conveniently died 3 months after the warrany ran out. typical. I know this happens to EVERYONE, no biggie. I looked up this problem online and found that I probably need a new motherboard. Who the heck has ever bought a new motherboard for their computer? I tried a few tricks I found on Google and it got working long enough for me to steal back my precious photoshop and illustrator programs from the demon computer. and my fonts. I dont know what I would do without all my fonts. I've got hundreds of them and i'm obsessed. I love new fonts like some people love a puppy or a homemade meal after a week of not eating. maybe thats a bit of an exaggeration.

anyway, now we are down to one laptop for the two of us to do school and work and everything on.

happy new year.